A systematic and efficient approach for the selection of material is necessary to choose a best alternative for the structure or component under consideration. The multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approaches are well suited to deal intricacy in judgment of material assortment. In this paper, integrated MCDM approaches like analytical hierarchy process (AHP)–technique for order preference by the resemblance to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) and AHP–multi-objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis (MOORA) methods are used to rank aluminum-coconut shell ash (CSA) composites. The weightage for each criterion is calculated by AHP method and utilized in the TOPSIS and MOORA approaches to rank the materials. The target-based attributes such as density (physical property), hardness, tensile strength, toughness (mechanical properties), wear rate, and coefficient of friction (tribological properties) of the prepared composites are considered in the selection of criteria process. The composites are fabricated using stir-casting process by varying the volume fraction (5, 10, 15, and 20%) of CSA incorporated with Al-1100 matrix. A detailed study on the MCDM approaches revealed that Al-15% CSA composite emerged as the best material followed by Al-10% CSA composite among all, whereas the base matrix is found as the poor performed material in this study. © The Author(s) 2020.